At present, Internet service providers (ISPs) cannot offer a high grade of Internet service irrespective of geographical regions. In addition, computing resources of the Internet service providers is being stretched by the number of Internet users being added month by month and by the increased level of service being demanded by those users. In addition, there is no assurance that high bandwidth Internet service can be acquired using wired telecommunication facilities, and there is no easy method for ISP to offer different tiers of service (in terms of bandwidth and response time) to different customers. These limitations are particularly true where ISDN facilities or analog facilities using modems are utilized by the ISP.
An improvement over the utilization of modems or ISDN facilities is the DirecPCTurbo Internet service of Hughes Network Systems. This service is explained in greater detail with respect to FIG. 1 in the Detailed Description. In essence, the DirecPCTurbo Internet service allows an Internet user to interact via their PC with a web site via an ISP. The information to be downloaded to the Internet user is then transferred from the web site to the network operation center (NOC) of the DirecPCTurbo service. The NOC then utilizes a satellite to transfer this information to the Internet user's PC via the user's own satellite dish. The problems with the DirecPCTurbo Internet service are as follows. First, regardless of how many times a web site has experienced a hit, for each hit, the data must be transferred from the web site to the NOC for transmission via the satellite to each individual user. This type of operation increases the cost of providing service for users who are accessing often-visited web sites and decreases the number of users that can receive service. Further, the service provides only one type of bandwidth and response time. Also, the pricing plans associated with the service assume the same type of bandwidth and response time but vary in the amount of money that will be paid based on the total amount of data transferred per month and the times of day that the transfers take place.